"Snow days are great, but generally you still have to wake up to find out if it is a snow day. [insingertech] decided to make a system to solve this problem. He made an alarm clock that would automatically de activate if school is cancelled. What a pleasant surprise it would be to just wake up and find that you had been allowed to sleep in. It is using an Arduino and a python script to control the state of the alarm based off of an online school closing announcement. You can download the software from the instructable." Via Hack-a-Day